Pfeiffer alumnus, principal shapes smart student leaders

By Ken Keuffel
for Pfeiffer University

Dwight Thompson, a 2010 Pfeiffer University alumnus who has served as the principal of Renaissance West STEAM Academy in Charlotte, since 2021, makes sure his students hear the same message again and again.
Each morning, he gets behind a mike in his office and greets them with the following words via an intercom: “You are so smart, you are capable, and we expect great things from you this morning. Have a wonderful day.”

Dwight Thompson

Throughout the school day, he and others on his staff pull kids aside to tell them that, of course, they’ll do well on their next tests because they’re so bright and capable. And when students head for home, they are told that “we cannot wait to see your smart selves tomorrow morning.”
Thompson’s short stint at Renaissance West has been so successful that late last year, he was named both the 2023-24 Wells Fargo N.C. Principal of the Year for the Southwest Region and the Principal of the Year for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
He taught in the elementary schools of Guilford County for 17 years before transitioning to a career in administration because he felt that by doing so, he could do the most good. He held resident and assistant principal jobs at several schools before becoming the principal at Tuckaseegee Elementary School of Charlotte in 2019.
Along the way, he earned a Master of Science in Elementary Education degree in 2010 from Pfeiffer University.
That Thompson has made the aforementioned messaging the norm at Renaissance West helps explain why he received these awards: Students have internalized it so much it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy marked by dramatically higher test scores and improvements in math and reading proficiency. Thompson says that when he took over at Renaissance West, the school ranked “in the bottom 5% of the entire state of North Carolina” and “no one passed state testing.”
“The message is that every child is brilliant,” Thompson said. “Every child can and will be successful.”
And if a student is struggling in certain areas, it falls on Thompson to work with teachers to come up with ways to address that. This kind of thing appeals to Thompson, who morphed from a teacher into an administrator so that he could implement what he calls “strong ideas and educational practices.”
He credits his studies at Pfeiffer with sparking his ongoing interest in researching best practices wherever they are — including Singapore. The successful mathematics programs in that country became the focus of the most in-depth paper he wrote while at Pfeiffer, an effort for which he received an “A” grade.
Positive reinforcement of what Thompson calls a “robotic” nature is but one of several “aggressive” steps that the principal has taken to turn things around at his school. These range from intentional recruiting of Black and Hispanic teachers to what he calls “heavy professional development around culturally responsive teaching,” about which Zaretta Hammond writes in a book titled “Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain,” the first edition of which was published by Corwin in 2014.
Diversity in staffing is especially important to Thompson, who is Black and originally hails from Burlington. Although 28.61% of Burlington’s population is Black, he had only one Black teacher during the entirety of his time as a student in Burlington’s public schools. He strongly believes that students tend to thrive in environments where they are taught and led by adults who look like them.
As Thompson begins leading Renaissance West through another school year, he will do so with the support of its teachers, who have bought into his vision and want to build on the improvements made so far.
Monique Carr, a math and science teacher at Renaissance West, is particularly bullish about the future because of Thompson’s leadership.
“When I think about Mr. Thompson, I think about a man with a vision,“ she said. “He gives us the steps we need to take to make sure that the vision is achieved. He provides us with resources as he follows us through the school year. He creates leaders.”

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